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Field-induced strains of 6% are reported in ferromagnetic Ni-Mn-Ga martensites at room temperature. The strains are the result of twin boundary motion driven largely by the Zeeman energy difference across the twin boundary. The strain measured parallel to the applied magnetic field is negative in the sample/field geometry used here. The strain saturates in fields of order 400 kA/m and is blocked by a compressive stress of order 2 MPa applied orthogonal to the magnetic field. The strain versus field curves exhibit appreciable hysteresis associated with the motion of the twin boundaries. A simple model accounts quantitatively for the dependence of strain on magnetic field and external stress using as input parameters only measured quantities.

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Ferromagnetic shape-memory alloys have recently emerged as a new class of active materials showing very large magnetic-field-induced extensional strains. Recently, a single crystal of a tetragonally distorted Heusler alloy in the NiMnGa system has shown a 5% shear strain at room temperature in a field of 4 kOe. The magnetic and crystallographic aspects of the twin-boundary motion responsible for this effect are described. Ferromagnetic shape-memory alloys strain by virtue of the motion of the boundaries separating adjacent twin variants. The twin-boundary motion is driven by the Zeeman energy difference between the adjacent twins due to their nearly orthogonal magnetic easy axes and large magnetocrystalline anisotropy. The twin boundary constitutes a nearly 90° domain wall. Essentially, twin-boundary motion shorts out the more difficult magnetization rotation process. The field and stress dependence of the strain are reasonably well accounted for by minimization of a simple free energy expression including Zeeman energy, magnetic anisotropy energy, internal elastic energy, and external stress. Models indicate the limits to the magnitude of the field-induced strain and point to the material parameters that make the effect possible. The field-induced strain in ferromagnetic shape-memory alloys is contrasted with the more familiar phenomenon of magnetostriction.

A Solid Freeform Fabrication Process called Three Dimensional Printing is applied to the fabrication of injection molding tooling with cooling channels which are conformal to the molding cavity. The tool is created by spreading layers of stainless steel powder and selectviely joining the powder in the layers by ink‐jet printing of a binder material. Unbound powder is removed from without and within the green part thus defined. The green part is sintered and infiltrated with a copper alloy to produce a fully dense tool. The infiltrant is kept out of the cooling channels by elevating the tool above the free surface of the pool of infiltrant in the crucible, thus creating a controlled negative pressure within the infiltrant. An upper limit to the separation of tooling cavity and cooling channel was derived based on transient heat transfer considerations. A tooling set was created to mold a split ring shape and conformal cooling channels were placed in both the cavity and core sides of the tool. The performance of this tool was compared against the performance of a tooling set with straight cooling channels. Thermocouples buried in the core and cavity showed that the conformal tool had no period of transient behavior at the start of molding, while the tool with straight channels took 10–15 cycles to come to an equilibrium temperature some 40°C above the temperature of the coolant. The conformal tool was also found to maintain a more uniform temperature within the tool during an individual molding cycle. The gap in the molded split rings did not change from cycle to cycle with the conformal tool, while it did with the conventional tool. A 2‐D finite difference model accurately captured the observed temperature histories of the mold with conformal cooling channels.